Bagley is turning back the clock

Saturday

Apr 20, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Fishermen are notorious for wanting the newest gadgets and the latest lures. Each holds the promise of being the magic bait that catches a fish on every cast.But how often do anglers pine away for the lure they had 30 years ago that was just a fish-catching machine. And dadgumit, the company quit making it. Or the ones they make today just aren’t as good.

By Robert DeWittOutdoors Writer

Fishermen are notorious for wanting the newest gadgets and the latest lures. Each holds the promise of being the magic bait that catches a fish on every cast.But how often do anglers pine away for the lure they had 30 years ago that was just a fish-catching machine. And dadgumit, the company quit making it. Or the ones they make today just aren’t as good.Bill Cullerton understands how those guys feel. And he wants the people who love their Bagley Bang O Lures, Balsa Bs and other favorites to fall in love with them all over again.“This is a retro line in the truest sense of the word,” said Cullerton, president of Bagley, the Port Richey, Fla., lure company known for crank baits and minnow style jerk baits. “We’re taking lures that at one point were very important in everybody’s tackle box, kind of got forgotten and now we’re bringing them back.”Bagley was the first American balsa wood lure manufacturer and its baits were among the hottest in the business in the 1970s and ’80s. They were the brainchild of Jim Bagley, an eccentric lure manufacturer who founded the company in 1954. Among the ways he promoted his products was by flying a helicopter to bait shops and tackle shows where demonstrations were being held.“He was very eccentric in how he did business and how he communicated with people,” Cullerton said. “He was quite a showman.”Bagley’s original lure was a pork rind type bait called the Black Magic Eel. But a wave of balsa wood lures was coming into the country from Scandinavia, the most famous of which was made by Rapala. Bagley jumped on the cutting edge with the Bang O Lure, a minnow style jerk bait.“The density of balsa makes it the most buoyant material you can make a lure with,” Cullerton said. “It just floats and bobs and moves in the water.“The action of a plastic bait comes from the design and the lip contour. Naturally, if you put a plastic lure in a tank and watched it float and put a balsa lure in a tank and watched it float, you would see the difference immediately.”Jim Bagley aged and eventually sold his company. It passed through several owners’ hands and deviated from its original designs.Meanwhile, two other lives converged. Cullerton’s family owned The Cullerton Co., a manufacturers’ representative agency in Chicago that sold a number of outdoor product lines. Cullerton decided to sell the successful family business and get into the lure business with the profits. He guesses that hankering came from his bloodlines.“I’ve always been intrigued by it and wanted to be associated with a brand that meant something,” Cullerton said. “My great grandfather was a man named Bill Jameson. He made lures. He owned the Jameson Lure Company.”Jameson was a top-of-the-line manufacturer in his day and the lures are prized by collectors. Cullerton wanted to be known the same way. He decided to keep an eye out for a recognizable brand that needed rejuvenation.But Cullerton’s experience was in marketing and sales. He needed to form a partnership with someone who understood manufacturing.Across the Atlantic in Finland, Jarmo Rapala had sold the famous lure company that his grandfather, Lauri Rapala, founded. Cullerton made contact with Rapala and flew to Finland.The two men were like-minded and agreed that they would look for an established brand that needed a shot in the arm. They wanted a company that was respected and viable. They didn’t want to start a new company.And then Bagley came on the market. Its lures had won four Bassmaster Classics. They could be found in just about every bass fisherman’s tackle box.“Bagley was a cookie cutter of what we were looking for,” Cullerton said.Bagley’s problem was that its lures weren’t performing like they had when Jim Bagley owned the company. Cullerton wanted to put more quality back into the product. To do that, they looked to the past. They literally asked fishermen to pull classic Bagley lures out of their tackle boxes.“When we bought the company, we didn’t make a lure for six months,” Cullerton said. “We stopped production and found lures that were 30 years old. We talked to fishermen and lure collectors and said show us your Bagleys that are really working.”Cullerton took the lures to Rapala, who understood how balsa lures are made.“We could have taken them and redesigned them, but they wouldn’t be Bagleys,” Cullerton said. “We designed every lure to Jim Bagley’s specifications. We were really capturing the original look of Bagley but we also wanted to recapture the action.”While Bagley is dead and they couldn’t ask him for some of his design secrets, one of his chief designers and carvers is alive and kicking. Cullerton and Rapala got Lee Sisson to consult with them to ensure that the designs and actions were correct.“It was our job not to play games,” Cullerton said. “We weren’t looking to cut corners in manufacturing.”Bagley’s line now includes the Bang O Lure, Balsa B, Diving B, Killer B, Little Honey B, Small Fry series, and the Mullet series, a hardwood saltwater line. Cullerton believes the company has gotten the designs right and is pleased with quality control. But now it needs more volume.“We’re a small company,” he said. “We have ambitions to grow and we are growing quickly. We have a hard time keeping the lures in stock.“What we need to do now is make more lures. You can’t just turn on a machine and turn out lures. There are 35 steps to making a balsa wood lure. You can’t rush through the process. We tank test every lure before it goes in the box. We’re not perfect, but we’re really making good lures.Nostalgia might be a part of what they do. But it’s not what the company is shooting for.“We’re not trying to capture the past,” Cullerton said. “We’re trying to make lures that are essential to a guy’s tackle box. We’re trying to make lures that are relevant to their experience on the water right now.”

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